Researchers developed an ultra-detailed way to look at viruses, bacteria, and even cells from the human body.
The research team demonstrated how the 3D software, dubbed cellPACK, could be used to model viruses such as HIV, Scripps Research Institute reported.
"We hope to ultimately increase scientists' ability to target any disease," said Art Olson, professor and Anderson Research Chair at TSRI who is senior author of the new study.
The new software will allow researchers to look at structures in the medium "mesoscale" range, a feat that has been difficult in the past. CellPACK allows scientists to quickly and efficiently process collected data on tiny structures and assembled them into mid-size models. In the past these types of models were primarily crafted by hand, which could take months.
To demonstrate the new method the researchers created a model of HIV showing the outer "spike" proteins that exist on its surface. The researchers used the model to test a conclusion made by HIV researchers from past studies that suggesting the spikes were randomly distributed across the virus' surface. Using the software the team disproved the past theory by finding the spikes were not randomly distributed.
"With the creation of cellPACK, Dr. Olson and his colleagues have addressed the challenge of integrating biological data from different sources and across multiple scales into virtual models that can simulate biologically relevant molecular interactions within a cell," said Veersamy Ravichandran, of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partially funded the research. "This user-friendly tool provides a new platform for data analysis and simulation in a collaborative manner between laboratories."
In the future the researchers will continue to tweak the software in order to model new virus shapes.
The findings were published Dec. 1 in the journal Nature Methods.
